Lin Dunn

About 350 WNBA fans and gay-rights supporters stayed afterward for a courtside talk with head coach Lin Dunn, player Layshia Clarendon, and figureheads from Indiana Equality Action and Indy Pride organizations.

“When I build a team, I want diversity,” says Fever head coach Lin Dunn. “I imagine a team like a bowl of fruit: apples, peaches, pears, bananas, and some nuts. Different perspectives and different personalities. You can’t have too many nuts, though!”

Lin Dunn is a feisty one. The native Southerner, who became a WNBA-champion coach on Oct. 21, has been at the helm of the Indiana Fever team for five years now. On Monday, she also shared in the good pleasure of listening to one Billie Jean King, one of the most decorated sportswomen ever and (barely arguably) the most influential female athlete of the past 100 years, as King addressed all comers at the downtown Indiana Repertory Theatre at the invitation of the Women’s Fund of Central Indiana. Her featured remarks came on the heels of Dunn’s own introduction, which was vintage, noting gamely that King was the first female athlete to ever earn more than $100,000 in one year and had purchased her first tennis racquet for just $8.20 decades ago.